


Among the Brookside Rushes

by Giohanna



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Rating May Change, my first fic!, no promises, tags will update accordingly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 16:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20997554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giohanna/pseuds/Giohanna
Summary: Eight years since her run, Sarah has long since convinced herself that the Labyrinth and all those inside it was a dream. She hasn't seen hide nor hair of a goblin since that awful night, and doubts she ever will again.





	Among the Brookside Rushes

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy, howdy! This is my first fic on this site and I'm excited to share it with y'all. No update schedule, I'm afraid. Being a college student is tough.

“Toby you have to hold  _ still _ .” Sarah wrestled her younger brother back into the chair beside the kitchen table. The tabletop was scattered with the remains of Sarah’s Halloween face paints, drums of colors with muddy surfaces from mixing pigments spread around them. She held a delicate detail brush between her fingers, leaning in close to Toby’s freckled face to see what she was doing. She licked her thumb and rubbed away the smudged edge of a whisker gone wrong from all his squirming. 

He politely waited until she had repainted the whisker before imploring, “It’s starting to get dark, Sarah! We have to go now!” He was beginning to whine in that way nine year olds do, and she sighed.

“A few more minutes and I promise we can stay out until there are no more houses with lights on, okay?” She could have just rushed the rest of his makeup, but she was an artist, dammit. She’d stared at a paused vhs tape on her tiny living room television of the Magical Mister Mistoffelees for hours trying to figure out how best to recreate the look without putting too much muck on her kid brother’s face. Sure, she may have felt a little ridiculous from the overkill, but Halloween was her  _ favorite _ . 

Toby’s big blue eyes lit up like stars and he sat up straighter, still enough that she could finish his whiskers and nose in no time. He was the perfect image of the Original Conjuring Cat; she had toned down the amount of makeup he’d wear, out of worry for his young, delicate skin.

She was rinsing her brushes off in the kitchen sink, Toby running around searching frantically for his black ears which had somehow gone missing in the last ten minutes, when the doorbell rang for the first trick-or-treaters of the night. She jogged to the front door and grabbed the massive plastic bowl on the entrance table beside it, putting on her best princessly smile, and opened the door. The chorus of “Trick-or-treat!” made her grin wider and she complimented each little costume on her porch. She placed handfuls of candy in their sacks and bags and buckets, cheering a “Happy Halloween!” as they turned back toward the street. 

The little Mister Mistoffelees was now ready to go, having tied his tennis-shoes that horribly clashed with his glittering leotard and tuxedo shirt combo. They were functional, though, and she didn’t have to worry about him getting blisters tonight. Sarah went back past the kitchen and peeked into her parents’ room where her father and Karen were resting before their long night of answering the door for children dressed as ghosts and ghouls. 

“Hey, we’re about to head out,” she said, knocking on the open door as she entered. 

Karen looked up first and a melting, soft smile crossed her face. “Sarah, you look lovely, dear,” she said, not for the first time that evening. She stood up from her desk in the corner and came over to smooth Sarah’s hair down, adjusting the long dutch braids, just so, over her shoulders. “I don’t think there’s a prince in this world who wouldn’t want you as his princess.” She centered Sarah’s silver circlet on her forehead. “Or a king.” She felt a little silly for being so excited about her Halloween costume when she was in her twenties, finishing her bachelors in archeology, but Karen’s attention made her smile.

Sarah had, around the age of sixteen, decided to give Karen a fighting chance to gain her good regards, and she had won them easily. During her first semester of junior year Sarah had been in near tears at the kitchen table trying to work through her physics homework, frustration staining her face red, hands shaking from embarrassment at her inadequacies. 

She was overwhelmed, completely, by her AP classes and her extracurriculars and her frequent nightmares. It all came to a head at once while she was trying to calculate work done when moving a chair all around in a vacuum. It shouldn’t even have been hard; she was good at this stuff, but today it felt like she was Sisiphus, pushing his rock with a certain number of Newtons or Joules per second, up the mountain, only to fall back down again. She felt stupid; she couldn’t focus; everything felt like too much. Hot tears prickled behind her eyes and she swore under her breath.

Karen had walked in on her from her bedroom and stopped at the threshold of the dining room, frozen where she stood, worried that offering her help might make Sarah more upset. Sarah hadn’t noticed she was even there until she pulled out the chair beside her and sat quietly, not touching or talking, just waiting. 

Sarah’s breath was shaky, but she managed to say, “I don’t know why this is so hard.” Her voice broke on the last syllable and a fat tear fell onto her homework sheet. It just made her angrier at herself. Why couldn’t she just  _ do _ it like everyone else in her class? Why did she have to be so far behind in everything?

Karen, very gently, reached over and took her hand in hers, gingerly pulling the pencil away and laying it down on the table. Sarah’s hands were cold, shaking with raw frustration at herself. She rubbed tiny circles in the back of Sarah’s hand, and they sat there in silence for a moment.

Karen felt, quite frankly, underprepared. She had read every book there was to read on step-parenting a teenager, but they never included stuff like this. They were all about spending “family time” and raising a healthy rapport between child and parent, how to prevent them from feeling like an invader was in their home. Karen had worked on that for a long time, but that wasn’t the problem right now, and no advice from those books would help. Her daughter needed her, and that was all that mattered.

“I’ve found,” she began, very softly, so that Sarah would not be frightened by her sudden speaking, “that when something like this gets to me, it isn’t just that thing. I’m usually bothered by something else, or maybe several something elses.” She didn’t comment on Sarah’s tears, which were still flowing, and she gave her a moment to reply. When none came, Karen continued. “I think we ought to take a break, no?” She stood up and tugged lightly at her step daughter’s hand to follow. She did without argument, but her movements were slow and tired.

It was storming without rain outside, the breeze playing gentle music on the neighbors’ windchimes. Karen closed the back door behind them and went to sit on the porch swing under a big, old oak tree she knew Sarah loved. They sat together in silence, listening to the wind tap tree branches together like drumsticks. She was still holding Sarah’s hand, and took it as a good sign, or at least an okay sign. 

She waited for a few minutes, just letting the sound of outside breathe some calm into Sarah. After the tears stopped flowing down her ruddy cheeks, Karen began, as best she could. “If you need to talk about something, I’m here. Or, if you don’t want to talk about anything at all, but don’t want to be alone, I’m here for that also.” 

Sarah sniffled and scrubbed her face with the heel of her free hand. She spent a minute taking deep, slow breaths, readying herself, before she said, “I feel like I can’t  _ do _ anything.” 

Karen didn’t know quite what to say, and she felt almost as if Sarah’s statement wasn’t quite done yet, so she waited silently. 

“I- this-” Sarah was on the verge of tears again, feeling like they’d never cease. “I’m so tired, Karen,” she said. “Everything feels so much harder than it should. I’m tired and I can’t focus on anything and it feels like every time I sit down and try to make myself, like,  _ try _ , it just doesn’t come to me.” 

“Sometimes, things aren’t easy, honey. That’s true for everyone.”

“Yeah, well I’m a straight A student; I shouldn’t be having this problem.” The venom in her voice felt directed at no one and the whole world all at once, for the audacity of some people to find life easier than others. 

Karen was quiet for a moment again. “When I was in high school, everything felt like the easiest walk in the park,” she said. “I studied and turned in work on time and had a good relationship with my teachers.” She smiled ruefully at the grey, boiling clouds above them. “But the first month of college had me in tears almost every night, trying to keep up with the workload I thought I could handle.” Sarah was looking at her now, listening. “But it wasn’t just the work. I was tired from staying up all night studying, my parents were going through a bad patch, my sister decided to up and run away. Even my goldfish refusing to eat his breakfast felt like the  _ world  _ was crashing down on my head.” 

Sarah giggled halfheartedly and Karen looked at her. She pushed some of her beautiful long hair behind her ear, out of her face. “Sometimes we go through times that feel like nothing will ever be right again. And it isn’t fair to yourself to expect that you can just keep going when you feel that way.” 

“I  _ have _ to do it, though,” Sarah countered, stubbornly holding to scolding herself. 

“Everyone  _ has _ to work and study and clean the house, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a break. You, honey, are so smart and capable, and I know it can be so frustrating right now when you don’t feel like you are, but you can’t just blame yourself for everything in the world.” 

Sarah sniffed and looked at the far side of the yard at the fence posts she’d begged Karen and her father to let her paint. They made her smile when she looked at them, covered in little birds and landscapes and trees. Karen loved them very much, and wished she could take them with her everywhere she went. Dusk was coming on, and the couple of posts Sarah had taken to with glow in the dark paint were starting to shine a soft uranium green.

Karen continued, “So, let’s take a break, shall we?” 

Sarah looked at her abruptly, almost startled. She didn’t say anything, but Karen knew she had a hundred protests on the tip of her tongue. 

“How about we watch a movie? Or go to the fair tomorrow, just you and me?” Karen thought back to her days in college where all she wanted to do was curl up on her cheap futon and read or listen to the radio repeat old baseball games. “Or we could do something quiet. All I’m saying is, I want you to take a break. For a whole day.”

Sarah was really about to protest this time, but Karen interrupted her. “The world will not end if you take one saturday off, baby.” She squeezed her step daughter’s hand. “We’ll have your father take Toby out somewhere and it can just be us.” She paused. “Or, if you’d rather be alone, I can give you some space.” Sarah shook her head to that one, very slightly, like she was afraid agreeing too vehemently would shatter something between them. “Alright, how about a quiet day tomorrow? No homework, no cleaning, just us and the couch and some snacks?” 

Sarah nodded in agreement after a minute or two, and they sat together outside until the rain came and the day was no longer alight.

As they went inside, a fluttering sound from the fence made Karen turn around. It sounded like a bird taking flight, a large one. She searched the darkness with her eyes squeezed to squinting, eager to see a crow or maybe a little falcon, until she saw the downy white of a barn owl swooping low over the sea of grass. It was there until it wasn’t, so fast she almost didn’t think she saw anything at all. Huh. She didn’t know they had barn owls here.

And so, that Saturday was spent in socks and pajama pants and old, baggy t-shirts with holes in the armpit seams. They made peanut butter cookies and ate them right out of the oven, still so soft they crumbled to bits between their fingers. They sat and watched movies on their little television in the living room, curled up around blankets and pillows, jumping at scares and laughing until their sides stitched at jokes. Karen never asked her to tell her all the things that were wrong, never pushed for her to do something she didn’t want to do. She was just. There.

One day, a month or two after their Saturday-off, Sarah emerged from the woodwork of the house crying, her breathing uneven. Karen was at the kitchen table, using the larger workspace to sort bills, and she stopped abruptly upon seeing the girl. She pushed her reading glasses off of her nose and set them on the table, dashing toward her step daughter. Her shoulders were shaking, from sobs or anxiety Karen couldn’t tell, but as soon as she was close enough Sarah hugged her hard around her waist, squeezing her eyes shut so hard tears leaked into Karen’s blouse. Karen recovered relatively quickly and wrapped her arms protectively around the girl, guiding her to the sofa and holding her there, as long as she needed. 

It felt like ages before Sarah could calm down enough to stop shaking so bad. Karen was running a gentle hand through her hair, painlessly detangling it and twirling it round her fingers. Sarah had had one of the worst nightmares since she was fifteen. 

_ She was in the maze again, but alone. No dwarves or worms or gentle, giant beasts to help her. The plants that once grew lush in the hedge mazes were wilted and there was a terrible, acrid smell in the air that made her lungs ache like she was inhaling smoke. Something was pursuing her. At first she thought it may be the Cleaners, but it didn’t make that sound. It was something dark like a shadow, but she couldn’t quite make out whatever it was. She tried to call out for her friends but she had no voice, and besides there was nobody there to hear her. She even tried to yell for the Goblin King, who at least did not make her blood run icily like whatever was chasing her did. She closed her eyes as she ran, wishing she was somewhere, anywhere else than here. _

_ She was suddenly in the King’s Esher room, stairs twisting in her view. She looked around and listened for any sound, but there was no Goblin King here. There was also no presence following her like in the Labyrinth. Maybe it couldn’t get inside the castle. She climbed the stairs, trying to catch her breath and adjust to the disorientation. She couldn’t find the exit. After several minutes of looking and looking, she sat on the top stair of one of the dizzying upside-down staircases and tried to think. It was strangely dark in here, like the Goblin King forgot to light all of the sconces on the walls this time, or maybe he got those curtains that block out as much light as they can from the windows. Either way, it was dim and hard to see clearly. She sighed and put her chin in her hands and waited. _

_ That was when she felt herself die. Sarah had, of course, never really died before, and so she wasn’t actually sure how she knew she was dying. But she  _ knew _ that that was what it was. Or maybe she was turning to stone. Maybe she was, and the turning to stone was what was killing her. Her chest felt tight, like she was down at the bottom of a deep, deep swimming pool and had let all her air out, feeling the press of pounds upon pounds of water squeeze her ribcage to breaking. She couldn’t breathe or move or even look around to see what was doing this to her. Everything was getting spotty, like she was fainting from donating blood. It hurt. She wanted to scream from the horrible numbness crawling up from her fingertips and her toes. She wished she could just pass out or die already, but of course it didn’t happen that easily. She waited for what felt like hours or days for her body to give out on her. She couldn’t even cry. She woke up after she was finished dying on the top step of a staircase in the Goblin King’s Esher room.  _

As soon as she opened her eyes she got out of bed and scrambled to turn on the light. She was shaking and crying already, like the tears had begun while she was still asleep. She didn’t expect anyone to still be awake when she stumbled out of her bedroom, but she clung to Karen with trembling fingers as soon as she was close enough. 

They stayed up on the couch with Karen gently stroking up and down her back until she could fall asleep again, and even then Karen didn’t leave her. She never asked about the dream, only whether Sarah was okay or needed anything. Sarah could never thank her enough for that compassion.

Since then, Sarah felt a lot better about her and Karen’s standing. She found out, to her delighted surprise, that Karen enjoyed making costumes as well, and they liked to sit together on the living room carpet hand stitching tiny bead details on the trains of dresses they probably would never have that good of an excuse to wear, but all the same, they loved it. 

Karen had helped with the dress Sarah was wearing for her costume tonight, as well. She had very carefully stitched intricate golden purfling on the cuffs and collar, Celtic knots twisting together. Sarah couldn’t believe she’d spend that kind of time on something like that for her, and she almost cried for joy when she saw it for the first time. It was pale blue velvet, draping over her body comfortably. She had been breaking in the slippers she wore with it for almost the whole month of October, just so she could wear something other than tennis shoes like her little brother on their suburban hike over cracked sidewalks and community garden paths. After she had assembled everything she had looked in the mirror and felt like a real princess like she never had before; a silver circlet as her crown, a long silver chain with a lapis lazuli pendant around her neck, rings of silver and gold with costume jewelry stones mixed in, and some beautiful silver flower clips Karen leant her for her braids. She didn’t think she could possibly cherish any dress she’d made before more than this one. 

Now Karen cupped her face in her hands and gave her cheek a kiss punctuated by a massive “ _ Mmmwah!”  _ That made both Sarah and Toby giggle, embarrassed. Her attention shifted to her tiny cat-attired son and she went for him with the ferocity of a mother having a very good day and wanting to hug her smallest child. Which is what she did. She gave Toby the same treatment of a kiss, but on his forehead where there was the least amount of makeup. Sarah doubted it was to avoid getting makeup on herself and more to avoid smudging any of the work she’d spent hours on just then. 

Sarah’s father stood from the recliner in the corner next to Karen’s desk, dog-earing his book page to save his place, rubbing his eyes under his glasses, and came to see his children off. “You look beautiful, sweetheart,” he said to her, omitting any kisses because he knew they embarrassed her (they embarrassed him too). He then turned to Toby and tickled his sparkly ribs. Toby giggled loudly, and Sarah felt the unadulterated gladness of a good Halloween night’s beginning. 

They set out out the door, leaving Karen and their father in the living room watching vhs tapes of their favorite “The Addams Family” episodes and waiting for eager children to implore them for chocolate and lollipops. Sarah planned on taking a circuit through the best places in the neighborhood (she used to write down which streets had houses that gave out king sizes) so they wouldn’t have to double back without any candy on the way home. She didn’t bring a bag of her own for Trick-or-Treating, but she had already decided she would carry Toby’s for him when he got tired later tonight (which he always did, every year). 

Toby, despite being nine and very brave, in Sarah’s opinion, for his age, always asked if he could hold her hand whenever they went somewhere. She was much more comfortable with it now that he’d passed that phase where he always had something horrible and sticky on his fingers, and she obliged whenever he asked, and sometimes even when he didn’t. They walked brusquely down toward the sidewalk and started ‘round their own cul-de-sac. 

October this year had already been pretty chilly, but tonight was almost downright cold. She was glad that both she and Toby were wearing long sleeves and pretty warm fabrics each. As they left, Sarah heard an owl hooting gently as night took over. The breeze rustled the fallen leaves as they crunched along. Children shouting and laughing and declaring “boo!” and “Trick-or-Treat!” surrounded them, and Sarah was at peace. 

Their immediate neighbor was a lovely, plump lady called Ms. Emmerson who lived with her close friend who refused to go by anything but Margaret. The ladies had a special soft spot for Toby and Sarah, having been around to watch both of them grow up into who they were now, and the past three years running they always gave Toby extra candy, or even homemade goody bags full of their heavenly cooking. 

Margaret opened the door and grinned down at the two of them as Toby implored her for a trick or a treat. She was a tall, thin woman with amber skin and dark, dark hair always pulled back in a thick braid. Her temples were just showing signs of greying these days, but her mass amounts of freckles made her look incredibly youthful for whatever age she must have been. Sarah liked when Margaret made tea the best, because she never over-steeped. Ms. Emmerson, unfortunately, almost always made tea too strong, though Sarah never refused to drink it when they invited her in for a cup. 

She was dressed in a long black cloak of real, expensive furs that she wore almost every year that Sarah could remember. The house’s scent wafted out onto the porch, carrying some kind of spicy incense fragrance. She’d asked, the first Halloween she’d visited, what the smell was, and Ms. Emmerson had chuckled about Margaret loving to burn incense “on such a night as All Hallow’s Eve.” Sarah had decided from then on that the two women must be witches in their own little two-person coven. They might have been; she didn’t know if she’d ever met any witches, and she definitely never met anyone who chose to tell her they were a witch, so her frame of reference for what a witch is was mostly contained in  _ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe _ , and the  _ Wizard of Oz _ . Neither of the ladies living beside Sarah struck her as anywhere near something like that, and so she guessed at a pretty young age that she would never know if they were or weren’t witches. 

Margaret was holding a massive crystal bowl full of full-sized candy bars. By default, Ms. Emmerson and Margaret’s was the best house to hit in the whole neighborhood, because even if you weren’t their favorite, you’d get a pretty sweet deal of candy to time spent walking ratio. Toby always spent a long time looking for the  _ perfect _ candy bar, even though there weren’t really that many options. Sarah took a Baby Ruth while he searched, and started chatting with Margaret. 

“How’s Halloween treating you so far?” the woman asked as Ms. Emmerson was heard from the kitchen calling out that “the cookies are almost done!”

“We’ve just started, but I’m excited for this year. It’s beautiful out tonight.” 

“And you’ve done a beautiful job on your costume, dear.” 

Sarah blushed and thanked her. “Karen did the purfling. By hand! Isn’t she just the most talented stitcher you’ve ever seen?” She held out her arm in demonstration, the gold thread and beads along her cuff catching the porch light. 

Margaret assessed the work with an impressed tilt to her brow. She also inspected Sarah’s costume jewelry rings. She looked like she was about to say something when Ms. Emmerson rounded the corner from the kitchen and declared that she must “give little Sarah a squeeze!” A squeeze she gave her. Ms. Emmerson’s hugs were always bone-crushing, but warm and welcome nonetheless. She then also delivered a gentle squeeze to the nine year old sifting through Reese’s cups and Mars Bars. 

After the pandemonium died down, Margaret asked, “Sarah, do you think you’d be able to stop by after you two have finished up? I’ve something I want to give to you, but we don’t want to keep you.” 

Ms. Emmerson nodded. “You can have those cookies I shape into bats when you come ‘round. I know they’re your favorite~.”

“I think we may be out pretty late. I promised Toby we wouldn’t go home until all the lights were off.” She smiled apologetically. 

“We’ll still be up, dear,” Ms. Emmerson assured her with a wink. “And if we aren’t, our kitchen light will be off, won’t it?” 

Toby had finally selected a Milky Way bar which was identical to the other five he’d discarded back into the bowl. He placed it in his bag alongside his sister’s Baby Ruth proudly. Then he expressed his wish to visit coming back. “We can stop earlier than we were gonna. If we’re coming back here,” he said shyly. He loved this house on Halloween night. If she was being honest, so did Sarah. 

Sarah ended up agreeing and they said their thanks and goodbyes to their two neighbors-who-might-or-might-not-have-been-witches. Sarah knew this would be a long, but satisfying night. 

It was a bit more than three hours and several blocks later that it happened. 

Toby’s arms were tired by now and Sarah was holding his bag (which was actually just a pillowcase she’d made out of fabric covered in Jack-o-Lanterns) for him while they walked. Her other hand was holding his, and they swung their arms together with their step. She had grown quite a bit in eight years, and her strides were difficult for a nine-year-old to keep up with, so she strolled for him, happy to enjoy the smell of leaves on the pavement. 

They were rounding the corner onto another street, this one full of large houses with the  _ good _ candy when Sarah caught something out of the corner of her eye. It was just the slightest movement, low to the ground, as if a stray cat or maybe even an opossum was slinking near the shrubbery lining the road. But it was gone much too fast, and she thought nothing of it. 

They approached a completely decked out two-story with orange and purple lights covered in cobwebs scaling up the sides. Ghosts hung on wires from the trees in the yard, Jack-o-Lanterns peeked at them from below shrubbery and beneath the front-most windows, long twisting branches from false trees arched over the doorway, and a flock of sticker-bats migrated across the side of the house. Toby always loved this house, even if their candy wasn’t the most impressive of the lot. The decorations were different every year; Sarah couldn’t remember a time she’d seen the same set-up as last Halloween. 

As they walked up to the door, the bushes under one of the windows rustled, just a bit, like that cat-or-maybe-opossum from earlier had dove into the low branches. Maybe it was part of the decoration: some kind of motion-sensing mechanism that shook branches when someone crossed its path. Maybe it was nothing but a stray breeze. Sarah didn’t really notice all that much; it was almost completely in the background of her focus. 

They rung the doorbell which had been decorated with little spiders all around it, and Toby cried, “Trick-or-Treat!” as the door opened. A lovely older lady called Mrs. B opened the door and gave Toby an impressed appraisal of his costume. Her bowl was full of Kit-Kats and Snickers fun sizes, and Toby opted for the claw machine method of just shoving his hand into the bowl and taking out as many at once as he could. Mrs. B’s candy policy was one handful per child, and Toby, as well as Sarah before him, had always taken full advantage of their father’s large hands, which they both seemed to inherit. 

Mrs. B also gave Sarah a compliment on her dress, to which Sarah blushed and thanked her. Toby deposited his handful into the bag Sarah carried for him and they thanked the lady before heading back toward the sidewalk. 

There were fewer kids out than earlier, and most of the lights were starting to shut off by now, so crossing paths to and from houses wasn’t as frequent for them. The wind was picking up, sending a chill through her layers of dress, and Sarah was feeling a bit tired by now. She had promised, though, and so until there was no light left on the streets they would forge ahead. 

They had planted beautiful young oak trees along the path here recently, dropping acorns and attracting a lovely squirrel population. There were no squirrels out tonight, but Sarah got the feeling that there was something in the trees. She was convinced it was just the atmosphere of the scariest night of the year finally getting to her as she walked hand in hand with her brother. The trees rustled without a breeze and she glanced up at them, momentarily spooked by some sort of shadow. Sometimes she felt just a little ridiculous about the things that startled her. 

Some kids were walking the opposite direction as them, on their way to grab massive handfuls of candy from Mrs. B’s big plastic bowl with skeletons embellished on the sides. It was dark, and Sarah couldn’t quite make out their costumes yet. It was an odd little bunch, she noticed that they seemed to be alone, no adult or even teenaged chaperone. Her neighborhood was friendly and relatively safe, but she had never been able to stand the idea of Toby out by himself since she was fifteen. They were all pretty small, too. Or maybe Toby was just exceptionally tall for his age? So long as they were in a group, she was sure it was okay.

She could just make out horns on the top of one of their heads, and their bright eyes shining in the dim streetlamp glow. They all appeared to be wearing masks, as they got closer; quite good masks too, very well made as far as she could tell (and I can tell you right now, reader, that Sarah Williams  _ knew _ her costuming). 

Toby’s grip tightened on hers, as though they were scaring him as they approached. Sarah couldn’t think of much to do other than speed up; there wasn’t a sidewalk on the other side of the street. So she widened her gate and Toby eagerly went along with her. She felt weird to be staring at the kids’ costumes, searching for the craftsmanship she loved to see, so she smiled at them abruptly and kept walking past as they went. One of them grinned up at her with horrible pointed teeth hidden under a beak, like some kind of bird. Another had bright, yellow eyes and deep scars on its face that moved dreadfully with its expression. The group seemed to register something about her and they all paused to look up at her face, tiny jeers passing between them, before they scurried away like so many mice. They were a group of goblins.

Sarah halted where she stood and could not force her head to turn to look at them again, even though she  _ needed _ to. Just to check. She had to see. But she couldn’t. 

_ It was just a dream and  _ those _ were just a trick of the light _ , she told herself.  _ Some really good masks they bought at a Halloween store or something. It isn’t real.  _ They _ aren’t  real . _ An owl hooting from somewhere near them made her jump. 

Toby peeked up at her, startled by the suddenness of their stop. “Sarah?” he asked, a look of worry crossing his whiskered face. 

She blinked and shook her head and forced a reassuring smile across her features. “Do you think you’re ready to start heading home?” Her grip had not loosened on Toby’s hand. A horrible, hindbrain fear nagged at her, making her terrified that if she stopped looking at him, touching him, thinking about him, he would be gone forever. 

He scrutinized her with his big blue eyes and nodded slowly, considering, to himself, that Ms. Emmerson’s baking was awaiting them. 

Sarah turned an about-face with her brother in tow and they made their way all the way round the circuit. Most houses had shut off their porch lights by now, just the fairy lights in oranges and purples, along with the dim street lamps lighting their way. There was no sign of the group of gob- children that passed them, and she assumed they must have trotted up the street away from them by then. 

The bag was heavy, and her shoes were definitely not all the way broken in, and Toby was starting to yawn bigly down beside her, but they were almost home and almost to Ms. Emmerson and Margaret’s house. 

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter wasn't beta read because I just couldn't stop the itch to upload it. Hopefully further chapters will be of a more prestigious quality, dear readers.


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